


The King's Banner

by omnishambles



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Gen, M/M, Original Character(s), POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-11 00:10:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4413356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omnishambles/pseuds/omnishambles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Strange & Sir Walter Pole, March 1816:<br/>'"Oh, machine-breakers. Yes, yes, I understand you now. It is just that you misled me by that odd name. But what have machine-breakers to do with the Raven King?"<br/>"Many of them are, or rather claim to be, his followers. They daub the Raven-in-Flight upon every wall where property is destroyed...they say that he will shortly appear to re-establish his reign in Newcastle."<br/>"And the Government believes them?" asked Strange in astonishment.<br/>"Of course not! We are not so ridiculous. What we fear is a great deal more mundane - in a word, revolution. John Uskglass's banner is flying everywhere in the north from Nottingham to Newcastle..."'</p><p>It is March 1812 and Ned Walker is seventeen years old. All he has ever wanted is for John Uskglass to return - and now the King's banner is flying in Nottingham, and drawing closer every day to Ned's home in the West Riding of Yorkshire.</p><p>A story about the machine-breakers and their King.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The King's Banner

**Author's Note:**

> This is an attempt to write something in a slightly _Ladies of Grace Adieu_ fashion, using the world of Strange and Norrell but playing in new parts of it with new characters - so a bit of an experiment! But who doesn't love the Raven King, right...?
> 
> All thanks and love to [equestrianstatue](http://archiveofourown.org/users/equestrianstatue/pseuds/equestrianstatue) for encouragement and casting an eye over this, and shout-out to Tumblr user [alwaysalreadyangry](http://alwaysalreadyangry.tumblr.com/), who I don't even know but who inadvertently [inspired this](http://alwaysalreadyangry.tumblr.com/post/121931744257/js-mn-fics-that-i-need-1-fic-about).

There was a spot on the moors Ned favoured above all others: it was nothing special to look at, just a patch of brush and bracken he would dig down into, but Ned liked it because he could see the whole town from there without anyone below being able to see him. It was a completely hidden, completely safe place, and he was up there the day he met the old vagabond.

In point of fact, the spot bore no little resemblance to a recurring dream of the moors Ned had had when he was six, and that may have accounted for his being so continually drawn there. The dream had been exactly the same every night for several months. In it, Ned was looking down on all of Liversedge, quite alone in the rain and wind, his skin raw and weather-beaten, and with the sound of laughter in his ears that was not his own - it was not the laugh of a six-year-old boy, but of a wild and lonely magician.

It was more the mood than the events of these dreams that prevailed in his memory now Ned was a grown man of seventeen. At six he had hardly even known what it must feel like to be alone, being so constantly in company with his twin sister Mary – but in the dreams he was not afraid, because he had magic and it would protect him. Besides, Ned had not been just any magician in these dreams: he had known, with the peculiar logic of dreamers, that he was in fact that great obsession of his childhood years, John Uskglass himself.

It had been the most fervent wish of Ned's boyhood that the Raven King should return and he should be able to see with his own eyes the things he had read about in books, and the stories that had come down through his family. Most of Ned's relatives on his father's side hailed from the King's City of Newcastle, which made for interesting tales, although really just about every family in the town had some story or other of a relative who had seen, met or been assisted by John Uskglass at one time or another. Ned had never set much store by these tales, but that had not stopt him going about the town at ten years old and writing each one down neatly in the little book he kept under his bed.

Because all children of the north grow up to love and fear their King, but Ned's love had been obsessive in character and even, for a while, heretical in intensity. In church, under his breath, he used to give thanks to the Raven King instead of to God and to pray to the Raven and to tell the Raven his problems, such as they were. It would have given his mother cause for concern had she suspected the wild extent of his devotion.

There were entire years of Ned's boyhood of which he must have spent the greater part simply sitting in front of his house: he would stare up at the moors for hours at a time, chin resting in his hands, wishing with all his heart and soul that he should see John Uskglass riding towards him atop a black horse, his war-dress of black feathers billowing in the breeze, his beautiful army of fairy servants at the back of him. 

Still, it had not been a lonely childhood in spite of everything. As well as looking absurdly like Ned, his sister Mary was very like him in character; she loved John Uskglass too, though it was Catherine of Winchester she loved best. They would pass hours as far from home as was allowed, playing in the place where the edges of their town met the wilderness and looking for doors to Faerie - not that they ever found a single one, or would have had the faintest idea what to do if they had.

Whenever they grew bored of their fruitless search, Ned would invariably say, “Please let's play that I'm the King and you're my pupil Catherine of Winchester.” 

And while most of the boys and girls Ned knew had grown bored of these games after a few short months, Mary always said, “Your _brilliant_ pupil,” and that was why she was his favourite person in the world.

She was still his favourite person now, even though they were both grown-up and worked in Rawfolds Mill, and even though she was betrothed and would be leaving home that summer. Ned was happy for her. But naturally they spent less time together, and so he spent more time alone, up in his favourite spot on the moors, watching as things went on below.

He was up there one morning in early March, resting before work in the new-risen sun, when he heard the sound of coughing. Ned was generally always alone up here and so for a moment he was startled. It was a hacking cough, a cough that had, as his mother would say, 'dug in' and become a permanent feature.

“Who goes?” Ned called, sitting up.

He looked around and realised that the sound was actually travelling from quite far away, and that an old man was picking his way across the steep upper part of the moor towards where Ned was sat, his expression as dreamy as that of a man walking a simple garden path. He was sure-footed as a goat, and as he approached Ned realised that he was not really old, but only dirty and bearded.

“Hulloa there!” called the not-so-old man, quite cheerfully. “Where am I?”

“Do you not know, sir?” Ned asked him.

“If I knew, I wouldn't be asking, would I?”

The man had a rough-sounding accent that was unfamiliar to Ned. “This is Liversedge,” he said. “Where have you come from?”

The man reached where Ned was sitting and sat down beside him, a kind of whole-body giving-up that made him look suddenly exhausted. He was tanned and weather-beaten and strange, but seemed friendly enough. After a moment or two of breathlessness, he seemed less tired, and said, “London.”

Ned was amazed. “You walked direct from London all the way here?”

“No,” said the man. “I have been everywhere. I have not been in London a long time now! But that is where I started out.”

Ned nodded slowly, not sure he quite followed. It was growing warm enough and light enough now that it must be time for him to go to work, and he was nervous of being quartered, but still he could not keep himself from asking, “Do you mean to say you don't live anywhere at all?” 

The not-so-old man shrugged in a wide-open, arms-out way and then lay back on the grass with the air of a man falling back onto his bed. Ned took this to mean that he did indeed live nowhere, but also, to some extent, lived everywhere. Ned had met wanderers before – though it was uncommon for them to come through his town, which was small and had only one proper trade apart from the vicarage and the manor and the pub and so on.

“Are you going to sleep?” Ned asked. The man did not say any thing but only lay there on the grass very still, so Ned got up. “Sorry sir, but I must leave and head to work,” he added. He was about to turn and go when, quick as a flash, Ned felt the man reach out and grab his ankle.

“D’you want to know a secret?” the man spat, all one word, _dyouwantaknowasekrit_.

Ned didn't have to think about this very hard. “Oh! Yes please,” he said, and wondered whether he ought to sit down again.

“Bring us some food, then, uh--”

“Ned,” said Ned.

“Bring us some food then, Ned,” said the man. “And you shall have your secret in return.” He waggled his fingers mystically, but as he seemed about to fall asleep it was not all that dramatic.

Ned looked down. His ankles were bare where he had outgrown his trousers, and the man had left dirty fingerprints on his skin. He could not really imagine that it would be a good secret, but something about the man intrigued him. More than that, he was sorry for him, and it seemed only polite to bring him something to eat.

“All right,” he said at length. “But I cannot come back for hours now because I have to work. Will you still be here this evening?”

With closed eyes, the man nodded a promise that he would. 

+

Ned spent a distracted and rather hungry day at work, having wrapped half the bread and cheese Mary brought him for lunch in a handkerchief to take up to the man on the moors, and the hours seemed to pull by slowly. Nothing happened at all except that Billy Brown got into another unpleasant-sounding argument with Mr Blakenson, the overseer. They'd argued more and more since the shearing frames were installed late the following year. A few of the older men had been laid off when it happened and Billy seemed to grow still angrier about this each passing day.

Billy was lucky, really: Mr Blakenson liked him because he was clever and so he got away with lots of things, but if he carried on this way - or if Mr Cartwright, the owner, found out - well, he’d be sacked before he was 21, and then where would he be? _Wandering_ , Ned thought, with a shake of his head, _like that man. Begging for bread._ Not that whatever Billy Brown did was any business of Ned's.

The sky was shot through with pink by the time Ned had hiked back up the side of the moor to his usual spot. Mary asked where he was going when they left the factory. He ought to have told her – a year ago he would have even dragged her up with him to meet the vagabond herself - but couldn't seem to think of a way of putting it that would not sound strange or even a little mad to the grown woman his sister very nearly was.

“I had a good dream up on the moors before work,” was all he said. “I thought I might go back and try to catch it again.”

Mary laughed and wished him luck. She did not ask what the dream was about, although he assumed she would think it had been about magic, which was still a powerful word between the two of them, rarely invoked.

When Ned got back to his spot, he found the wanderer still there, half in and half out of the hedge, watching the sunset.

“I see John Uskglass has got his paints and brushes out tonight,” said Ned by way of a greeting. This was, of course, a common enough phrase, although he used it with perhaps a little more sincerity and affection than most.

“Good evening, sir,” said the ragged man. “I did not know if you would come back.”

“I said I would,” said Ned. He sat down beside the man and added, “What is your name? I did not think to ask earlier. I have been calling you 'Merlin' in my head all day.”

“Oh! That rogue,” said the man, but he laughed and seemed pleased. “My name is Vinculus.”

“Here, Vinculus,” said Ned, and tipped the handkerchief of bread and cheese into the man's dirty, outstretched palms.

Vinculus ate quickly and hungrily. Ned, who had often seen hunger but had rarely seen any thing which approached starvation, looked away out of consideration. Above the moors, the sky was turning burnished orange, and there were birds wheeling and diving over the next hill, but they were too far and the wind blowing too much in the wrong direction for Ned to hear their calls.

“Thank you,” said Vinculus, quite sincerely. “You're a good lad - observant too. You're not the first to have loaned me that old brother-magician's moniker.”

If Ned had not been sitting down he may well have fallen over. “A magician!” he said. And from London, too!

Naturally they had all heard tell in his town of the return of English magic, and how one or two men had gone to the Peninsula and boggled the French with ships made of rain and so on - but Ned knew little detail about it, as he could not afford the periodicals. Besides, what should he care for _modern_ magic, he had always felt, and southern too? And yet Ned found that he did care very much indeed when faced, as he was, with a flesh and blood man.

“Are you the London magician we have heard so much talk of?” he asked. “The one commissioned by the government.”

Vinculus spat on the ground. “I am not so afeared as all that,” he said, with some disgust, which Ned did not particularly understand.

There must have been something about Vinculus which demanded respect, because Ned knew that this was a ludicrous question – as if the famous London magician (or were there two? Ned was not sure) would be up here, sleeping on a moor, ragged as a lost dog! It was clear that Vinculus was simply one of the breed of vagabond magicians who had been known to come through towns like Ned's occasionally, doing bad tricks and conjuring pretend spirits for pennies and bread. Ned had always found the vagabond magicians uniquely disappointing as a boy, because he wished so much to meet a real magician - and yet each time he met a new one it was impossible not to hope that now - this time…

“Would it please you to shew me some magic, sir?” asked Ned politely.

Vinculus smiled at him. “I promised you a secret for that food,” he said. “So it is up to you. Would you rather a secret or some magic?”

Ned thought about this for a moment. “I think I should most rather have a secret _of_ magic,” he said, whilst trying to make up his mind.

Vinculus's face lit up. “Then it is your lucky day, boy, for that is just what I have to give you.” Vinculus got up on to his haunches as quick as a wild animal and seized Ned, who was quite taken aback, by the lapels. For a moment, Ned wondered if he had been quite wise not to tell a single soul that he was coming up here alone at dusk to meet with a strange man. But then Vinculus said, “Do you love your King, sir?”

Ned felt the words move in his stomach like they had fingers in his guts, he felt the _Yes_ growing there, a physical thing that demanded to come out. “Aye, sir, naturally,” he stammered. “Better than any thing.”

“Good lad,” said Vinculus. “I knew it by the sight of you that you did.”

It was growing dark now, but the birds over the hill had come near enough that Ned could hear them - and he knew those calls better than any other sound, he felt them in the part of his body where his heart beat, his heart that loved its King so well. He looked up at them and Vinculus shook him to bring his eyes back to his own, and Ned said simply, by way of explanation, “Ravens.”

Vinculus grinned a dark grin. One hand still holding Ned's coat, Vinculus pulled at his own ragged, weather-beaten shirt with the other and Ned saw that he was covered all over with strange blue markings which Ned did not recognise. Vinculus's face was very near his own, his eyes black and the ravens calling of a piece with his own hard, bird-like voice when he said, “If you truly love your King, be glad, sir: for I am the book that is here to tell you he is coming back.”

Then he shoved Ned hard into the ground and Ned could not hear him any more over the sound of the birds, which were suddenly and impossibly loud, or over the sound of his own heart, thumping hard in his ears like a drum to beat his king welcome home. There was no reason Ned should have believed it, it was a prophecy such penny magicians loved to make, and yet he did believe it - in fact, in that moment, he more than believed it. He knew that it was so.

Ned lay on the ground with the smell of the soil in his nostrils until his breathing was normal again, which felt like a very long time but in truth was no more than a minute. Of course Vinculus had gone away into the dark night by the time Ned looked for him.

Shaking, Ned picked himself up and made his way quietly down the moors towards home.

He was quiet that evening, and tired. He fell asleep early and dreamed all night of the Raven King passing on horseback down the road that went through the centre of Liversedge, moving steadily towards Rawfolds Mill, where Ned and Mary worked. The streets were lined with men and women whom Ned did not know and some of them were crying, and away up towards the moors Ned could see the shadows of hanged men long on the ground. Ned looked up at his King to ask him what had happened, but he found that he could not speak. And from his horse, John Uskglass pointed down at Ned, and he said, “You, sir. You.”

+

The morning after Vinculus told Ned that the Raven King was coming back, Ned could think of little else. He walked to work with Mary, glad to finally have some time alone with her, and told her all about the vagrant and his promise of a secret.

“But Ned,” she said sadly. “John Uskglass? You know as well as I do that every vagabond magician who's ever come through here has said as much.”

“You did not see him though! The writing on his chest was so strange - well really it was only markings, I do not know why I should think of it as writing. But Mary, when he said the words, the ravens all called out so very loud.”

“Oh! It does sound strange,” she said cheerfully. “I cannot believe you did not take me with you.”

“If I’d known what he was going to say, believe me, I would have!”

She stopt still in the road and looked at him, her mouth a thin line, as it always was when she was thinking particularly hard. “You do honestly believe it, don't you?” she said.

Ned grinned at her and laughed and then grabbed her by the hand and pulled her on. “Let us talk after work,” he said. “And not be late.”

They’d been told yesterday that they would be pressed at the mill today, which meant an early start and a late finish, and Ned could feel his muscles complaining in advance at the prospect of a day's work lasting more than 12 hours. Worse still, Mr Cartwright was in today.

Mr Cartwright owned the mill and was almost universally disliked. When he came in to inspect the work and watch the staff, there was nothing to do but keep as quiet as possible and work as fast as you could. But Ned had an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach that day, and as soon as he glimpsed the look on Billy Brown's face he knew why. It was a troublemaker's look.

Billy was the same age as Ned and always angry. The two of them had grown up together and worked together, and yet had barely ever said two words to one another - in large part because Ned had always been afraid of Billy, whom Ned's mother thought ‘too clever by half’. There was something in his manner that seemed always to be laughing at one, and Ned, who had quite often been laughed at by the other boys for being quiet and living too much in his head, avoided him instinctively.

Mary was similar to Ned in every way that mattered, but she'd been laughed at very little as a girl (the features that looked feminine and ill-defined on Ned were beautiful on Mary; all the boys treated her with a rough, jocular kindness, and the girls with a kindness less fraught with meaning), and so she had no fear of Billy. The two of them had been particular friends from when they were about fourteen until about the time Jack Kitson asked for her hand.

Naturally they said less to one another now, but not with any impoliteness or bad feeling. It was simply proper that she should spend less time alone with young men friends, and seeing as Billy spent precious little time with anyone at all, they had not the option of talking while part of a group.

Mary said that it was hard for Billy to be too clever for the cotton mills. “He ought to be in government if he'd had the education,” she told Ned once. “And worse, he knows it. That's why he's like he is. He doesn't mean to be rude but only he gets so angry he could burst at the unfairness of it all.”

Mary was too smart for the mill as well, although luckily for her, and unlike Billy, she did not seem to know it. So she was not especially unhappy, but only got tired sometimes of being made to do things she knew better than.

The first few hours that day were uneventful. The best thing about doing meticulous, repetitive work was generally the same as the worst, in that hours could pass in the blink of an eye. Coming up towards lunch, though, Ned heard Billy's voice ring out, not especially loudly but not quietly either.

He was saying, “Look at that, the finish on it.” Ned looked up and saw that he was pointing to a piece of work done by the cropper next to him, Peter Rhys. Peter was bright red and looked uncomfortable.

“I mean, could you get a machine to do that?” asked Billy.

This was one of his usual topics. They were all wary of machines taking the skill from the work they did - but all the more so because Billy claimed to know for certain that Mr Cartwright planned to get yet more shearing machines put in any day now to finish the woollen cloth, and then almost all the croppers could start to be let go of. A few machines had been put in last year and some croppers were already gone, but Ned generally tried to think on this as little as possible.

Billy said it was inevitable that the machines would replace all of them eventually, because men like Mr Cartwright were greedy and wanted nothing more than an excuse to pay people less for their work, or not have to have them at all.

It seemed that Mr Cartwright had not heard what Billy said to Peter and that he might get away with having spoken out of turn, though Mr Blakenson the overseer was looking daggers at him, not that Billy noticed, or would've cared if he had. People all around him had gone very still, trying to listen intently without looking like they were listening, though Ned was, by now, openly staring. Billy looked up and met his eyes and for a moment they were both quite still, looking at one another. And then, as though the whole room were not there at all and he was speaking only to Ned, Billy said, as calm as you like, “No wonder they're marching under the King's banner in Nottinghamshire, eh?”

Mr Cartwright had definitely heard that one. He let out a bellow like a stuck pig and Mary, whom he happened to be standing behind at the time, visibly flinched. “Which man said that?” he called out. Nobody said a single thing, so he called again: “Which man?”

Ned was shaking as Mr Cartwright marched towards the croppers, but he wasn't sure if it was from fear or something like exhilaration. The words _the King's banner_ echoed in his ears. It didn't take Mr Cartwright long to work out who it had been - no man would meet his eyes but Billy, who was staring back at him with a pure, calm hatred.

“I should have known it was you, troublemaker - I've had problems from you before. What's your name?”

“William.”

“Sir!”

“William, sir,” said Billy. Ned wasn't sure he'd ever heard such disrespect put into a few short syllables before.

“I will not have that kind of talk here - do you understand me?”

He pulled his leather strap out from the holder at his side, and Billy watched him do it. It was not uncommon to see children who were doffing strapped for being slow when they got tired - Ned had been strapped as a boy and Billy too - but they were too old now, they were men, and men were just fined for offences or sacked for bad ones.

“You can’t,” said Billy.

“I can,” said Mr Cartwright, who knew what they were all thinking and did not care. “You’re a minor aren’t you, boy? A lad of seventeen, as I recall it - and you need teaching how to address your betters.” 

For a moment it seemed that this might unsettle Billy’s eerie calm, but then he said, “You're not from around here, sir, are you? Originally.”

Mr Cartwright swung back the arm holding the leather strap and somebody gasped in the moment before Billy was hit - but then Mr Cartwright let his arm fall again, seeming to think better of it.

“Mr Blakenson,” he called. Mr Blakenson had been watching along with everyone else, and visibly jumped at hearing his name. It was as though a character in a novel he had been reading and not much enjoying had suddenly addressed him directly, and invited him to come and join them on the page. Mr Cartwright looked at him with something very like malice when he added, “I'm sure you would hate to see me do your job for you.”

It was the overseer's job to strap workers who were slow or lazy, but Mr Blakenson was a kind man who almost never did it. He would just tap at the doffers when they were tired – he never even fined Billy for all his cheek.

What was more, unlike Mr Cartwright, he was one of them: he'd grown up in Heckmondwike just down from Liversedge, and been a cropper before he was an overseer. Billy was still looking at Mr Cartwright quite calmly, waiting, but everybody else was looking at Mr Blakenson; they knew he was soft on Billy and could never discipline him properly. Ned supposed Mr Cartwright knew it too and that was the point.

People had openly stopt working now and were staring in silent horror as Mr Blakenson nodded and took out his leather strap. He was looking at the floor, and pulling his greying hair back with his free hand.

As though to distract from this, Billy carried on addressing Mr Cartwright directly in a remarkably calm-sounding voice. “The thing is, sir,” he said, “people here, we love our King. So to act as though what is happening in Nottingham--”

Mr Cartwright shoved him hard to stop him talking, and barked, inches away from Billy’s face, “Go to the far wall - there.” Billy turned on his heel and did as he was instructed. He had stopt speaking now and would not look at Mr Blakenson at all, which Ned took for a kindness.

Ned watched along with everyone else, hypnotised, as Mr Cartwright made Billy put his hands up on the wall and then nodded to Mr Blakenson, who slowly raised the strap above his head. There was a moment where it seemed as though he might refuse, before he brought it down on Billy with a sound that seemed to suck all the air out of the room. Billy made a small, sharp noise, but not as loud, Ned knew, as the one he would have made in Billy’s place.

“Harder than that,” said Mr Cartwright. “I'll _not have_ that Johannite filth talk in my own mill.”

Mr Blakenson paused a moment. Even from here you could see that his hands were shaking. Then he brought the strap down on Billy again.

“And again,” said Cartwright. Another smack and another sound, and Ned's hands were shaking now too so that when Cartwright turned and shouted, “Back to work the rest of you, or line up whoever wants to be next,” he could barely even move.

Fumbling at the material, Ned heard Billy get three more straps before Billy's voice suddenly rang out all through the mill, ragged with pain but impossibly loud. “Beat me if you will, but do not imagine that you own me,” he said. “I belong to John Uskgla--”

With a furious sound, Mr Cartwright had wrenched the strap from Mr Blakenson's grasp and struck at Billy himself, with such a wild fury that Billy, who had been so quiet, could not keep from crying out in pain. One strap, two, three - Ned threw his work aside and shouted, before he even knew what he was about, “Leave him, you will kill him, sir! Leave him!”

“I will not have this talk!” Mr Cartwright yelled, bringing the strap down with such impossible force that the sound turned Ned's stomach. “I will not have it!”

Ned was certain that Billy was still trying to shout about the Raven King, only he could not seem to get his breath to do it, and now Peter Evans joined in with Ned, and so did Jack Kitson and some of the older men too. “Stop, sir,” they shouted, “stop!” And then Mr Blakenson reached forward suddenly and stayed Mr Cartwright's hand. Cartwright threw him off but stopt all the same, panting, white with fury, and his face as he turned to look at the other croppers was like something from a nightmare.

Mr Cartwright straightened up and hurled the strap down at the stone floor as though delivering a killing blow. Then he adjusted his clothes, turned and went straight out of the room. As soon as he heard the door slam, Billy's legs gave out and he slipped down against the far wall. Mr Blakenson caught him and helped him to his feet, and everyone watched silently as the two of them left the room. Then there was nothing left but the sound of their footsteps in the corridor beyond and of one of the young doffer girls crying quietly. It seemed nobody had any thing else to say.

+

And all afternoon as he worked and Billy did not come back and Mr Cartwright did not come back and only Mr Blakenson with his greying hair seeming greyer already and his shaking hands still shaking came back, just him, all afternoon Ned prayed to John Uskglass as he had not done since he was a boy. He prayed that the Raven King would come back and somehow undo Billy's terrible beating (Ned had worked here eight years and seen plenty of strappings, but never one like that), and he imagined Mr Cartwright prostrate on the floor before their King, weeping with terror as John Uskglass explained that his own good people could not be treated thus, he would not stand for it.

Perhaps an hour had passed before he was able to meet Mary's eyes and Ned could see immediately that she had been crying very hard, her blotchy face white and red under her curtain of dark hair. He wanted very much to go over and hold her hand, but he could not leave his work and nor could she, and he hated the world for it. It was the first time he had really understood how it must feel to be Billy Brown and filled with so much anger. It made him, above all else, profoundly tired.

+

It was almost dark by the time they got out of the mill. Mary hugged Ned very tightly before leaving for a walk with Jack, although none of them had much to say to each other; when she and Jack started out, they seemed to be holding one another up. For his own part, Ned could not decide whether he wanted to head home and cry in his mother's lap like a small boy or walk out to the moors alone and think.

He was restless and thrumming with high emotion still, so much so that he could not seem to chuse where he should go or what he should do. Ned was so lost in thought that he simply went and sat down on a low wall a few feet from the entrance to the mill, and was still sitting there silently twenty minutes later when he spotted a small figure standing alone in front of the main doors.

It was Billy.

Everyone else had long since gone home exhausted, but here was Billy, who should have been in bed hours ago, who should have been half-dead, just stood looking up at the mill. It was a strange sight and yet it felt completely natural - it was as though Ned had known he would come back and had been waiting for him.

Somewhere a dog was barking as Ned got up and crossed the road to stand next to Billy, who looked away from the windows for a moment to meet Ned's eyes, and then looked back at the building without saying any thing. Both of them were as calm and as quiet as though they had arranged to meet here.

Billy's swollen eyes made it look as though he had been crying hard all afternoon, even though he, just like Ned, was a grown man now of seventeen.

“Did they sack you?” Ned asked quietly.

Billy laughed bitterly. “When they can get entertainment like that out of strapping me? Of course not.”

Ned was not all that surprized, though he did feel a strange wave of physical relief. After all, the factory was busy at the moment - girls from villages and townships around Liversedge as young as six or seven were starting as doffers to keep up with the rush. But unskilled workers were cheaper, of course, and he had to admit that Billy was right: if Mr Cartwright and men like him could afford to hire unskilled workers and sack them at a moment's notice, if the machines got so simple that Cartwright barely had need of men, it would be no time at all before the whole town starved. Ned could not believe he had been so content for so many years with dreaming; he felt consumed by his anger, so angry that it gave him a kind of strength.

“I never seemed to understand what you were speaking of before,” said Ned. “But I do now.”

Billy nodded slowly, still looking up at the mill. He seemed to be counting or making some kind of calculation in his head. Ned added, more for his own benefit than Billy's: “It's a kind of war.”

“It is,” said Billy fiercely, nodding.

Indeed, so profound was his feeling of transformation that Ned had the strange sensation of Billy being the only person who now spoke a language he could understand. He asked, “What did you mean when you said they've been marching under the King's banner in Nottingham?”

At this, Billy turned and looked at him, really looked at him. It made Ned feel as though he had never been truly looked at in his life until then. “Come a walk with me, Ned,” he said.

Ned nodded, and they walked a few steps, but Billy was very slow. Ned put a hand across Billy's shoulders and after a moment Billy looped an arm around Ned's neck and rested on him for support. It clearly hurt to move the skin on his back and legs, which must be quite raw. But Ned helped him to move without them even needing to discuss it. It was as though their bodies and their minds were speaking now without need of their mouths, and Ned knew then that Billy would ask him to do dangerous things and he would do them gladly.

They moved away from the town and the mills and all of it, out towards the forest that lined the road with only the full moon to see by. Once they were alone in the patch of grass before the forest started proper, Ned asked if he wanted to sit down, and Billy looked awkward and uncertain for the first time in Ned's memory. “Forgive me,” Billy said. “I'm tired, but I don’t think I _can_ sit.”

“I couldn't believe how brave you were about it,” said Ned in a rush of boylike sincerity, and Billy smiled.

“Thank god you thought so,” he said. “It was all I could do not to beg him to stop.”

“It didn't seem that way at all.”

“Thank god,” said Billy again.

Mary had been right, of course - now that they were speaking Ned could see that Billy was kind, just as she had said, but only seemed so hard because he was like a tool, sharpened to a fine point by his desperate purpose. A tool made for something so specific could barely perform other tasks at all - but he was a good man, Ned knew it now.

The upper part of Billy's back was unharmed, and he leaned on it against a tree while Ned, exhausted from his long day’s work and all of its emotions, sat on the cold grass. He felt conspicuous sitting at Billy's feet in this way, but Billy could not join him on the floor and Ned could not stand any longer and this was another thing that stoked the fires of Ned's new anger. 

“You asked me what I meant about the workers in Nottinghamshire?” Billy asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, just what I say,” said Billy, smiling with half his mouth. “Down in Nottinghamshire, they smash machines in John Uskglass’s name. They go in the dead of night and march under his banner, and they paint ravens on the wall and on the floor.”

For a moment Ned was thinking too hard to respond. Then he said, “That is a thing I would like very much to see.”

It was dark now, but Ned could see Billy's teeth in the dark. He was grinning.

“Me too,” said Billy, slowly. Ned grinned back, then dipped his head. For a moment they were quiet, and then Billy added, “The government and the factory owners are scared of revolution. Cartwright and all the men like him are terrified.”

“I wonder how many men there are like Cartwright,” said Ned, because he was thinking too hard to say any thing more useful.

“Plenty enough,” said Billy. “And believe me, they are all the same. Here, Ned, can you help me--”

Billy wanted to kneel on the ground, his knees being undamaged too. Ned got up and helped him do it, supporting his weight, and all the while strangely aware of Billy’s short, tight breaths against his face. “Thank you,” said Billy when it was done. Ned didn't suppose he was very used to accepting help from anyone at all, but he didn't seem to mind accepting it from Ned.

They knelt on the ground together and from here in the clearing, in the darkness, they could still see the back of the mill. “That window up there – you see the one? – that’s the offices, where Cartwright keeps dogs to bark if they hear a sound,” said Billy, and Ned, who liked dogs, suddenly wondered if they would have to kill them. It was a stupid thing to think because they had not agreed to any thing, and he kept this concern to himself, but Ned could not, now, stop picturing the inside of the mill at night, moonlit and dusty as it must be at this moment. Holding a heavy weight in his hand and bringing it down - and seeing as he did so that flash of Billy’s grin as he had just seen it here, like something glimpsed through the trees in a forest. Ned drew a shaky breath.

“What is it?” asked Billy.

“It is just – a frightening thought. What we must do.”

Billy said nothing, but stayed very still, watching him intently.

“We have to, don’t we? Today only proved how scared Mr Cartwright is of the Johannites – and surely it’s the only way--”

“I think so too,” said Billy, desperately, and he reached out suddenly and gripped Ned’s hand in his own hard, calloused palm. Ned gripped back tightly but he could not meet Billy’s eyes any longer, for in truth the look in them frightened him.

Billy said he had once taken a plan of the mill from Mr Blakenson’s office – Ned supposed that this was on one of the many occasions Mr Blakenson had had cause to remand him in there. Though everybody knew he ought to beat Billy and never did, but only shouted at him, and most of his shouting was less disagreement than it was a warning to go more carefully.

“I can bring them to you when we meet again,” said Billy.

Ned nodded slowly. “When?”

“Sunday night? Will you be able to get away from home?”

“Easily enough.”

“We should try not to be seen together – or rather, I suppose I mean that you should try not to be seen with me. Mine will be the first door they knock on afterwards.”

Ned had not considered this. “Perhaps we shouldn’t--” he began, but Billy waved him away.

“And I should like to see them try and prove a single thing,” he said bitterly. “No, but there is no need to make trouble for you when you have the reputation of being so quiet.”

Ned nodded. He felt afraid and didn’t want to, so he thought about John Uskglass instead, which all his life had been a safe thought for whenever he needed courage. “It feels a hundred years ago,” he said, “but I met a wandering man yesterday who said he was a magician from London.”

“Here?”

“Up on the moors,” said Ned, pointing. “This will sound silly.”

“Go on, though.”

“He said he would tell me a secret and then – he said that – well, he said what they always say.”

“The Raven King is coming baaack,” croaked Billy, a hush-voiced approximation of an old magician’s voice. Ned laughed.

“Yes,” he said. “Just the same. But do you know, I believed it when he said it? The sky was full of ravens, and… Anyway. I know how it sounds. But what if he was somehow right?”

“I hope he was,” said Billy with a sudden desperation. “God, I hope so.”

“Me too,” said Ned. “It is all I have ever wanted.”

To his surprize, Billy smiled then – not a trouble-maker’s smirk or something sardonic like usual, not even like his grin earlier at the thought of breaking into the mill. It was a real, fond smile Ned had never seen on his face before. “You always seemed so far away, Ned, when we were small. I used to wonder what you were thinking of. I asked your sister once and she said that it was always magic.”

Ned blushed. He was pale with dark hair and dark eyes and his face lit up like a lamp whenever he was embarrassed, but in this watery, thin moonlight it hardly mattered - and anyway, it wasn't the bad kind of embarrassment, like when Mr Blakenson reprimanded him for going slowly or John Hillier had pushed him in the mud as a boy for being odd. It was a warm and strangely pleasant kind of self-awareness. He could not believe that Billy had been wondering and thinking about him all these years, just as he (he realised now) had been wondering and thinking about Billy.

“I never understood your friendship with Mary when we were young,” said Ned. “I do now.”

“The two of you are very alike. It’s a little alarming.”

Ned laughed. “Would you mind me telling her about… Would you mind me telling her? We cannot do it alone and I think she will understand.”

Billy nodded slowly. “I think you’re right,” he said. “And I’d gladly trust Mary with any secret in the world.”

Understandably, Ned felt the same. He wanted to ask if Billy had loved Mary, if he would be sad to see her marry somebody else – but before he could even imagine how he might word it, Billy said, “I am sorry for it, but I feel I must rest now.”

Ned went immediately to help him up, saying, “Of course.” Billy seemed small in his tiredness and, in fact, was - Ned had not realised before that at some point he had outgrown him physically. Ned was taller, bigger than he realised. Billy pushed his face into the crook of Ned’s neck for a moment as Ned helped him up, and Ned felt the strangest wave of emotion – a desire to protect Billy, a longing to stay like that. It lasted only a moment, and then they were walking out of the clearing and back towards town.

Ned wanted to walk him home, but Billy would not allow it, as he felt it unwise. So Ned just helped him to walk as far as the mill.

“The rest I can do alone,” said Billy. “Thank you.” But he gripped Ned’s hand for a long time as he bade him goodnight.

+

It wasn't until after church on Sunday that Ned was left alone with Mary. Their mother had gone next door to take tea with her friend Mrs Hunter, while the twins peeled potatoes for Sunday lunch. They had cousins coming from Clackheaton, and Ned was worrying already about how he might get away to meet with Billy that evening, so much so that he physically jumped when Mary said, “Do you suppose Billy Brown will be back on Monday?”

After their conversation Friday night, Ned had not seen him, as Billy had not been in work on Saturday. “I suppose so,” Ned murmured, trying to rid himself of the sensation that his sister could read thoughts.

“Aye, well, that's if Cartwright hasn't sacked him,” said Mary darkly.

“He hasn't.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Ned put down the potato he was holding and looked at his sister. He wondered if she knew somehow that he had been keeping a secret from her, and was trying to make him tell. “I saw Billy Friday night,” he said. “At the mill.”

“At the mill?”

“When I was leaving he was just stood there on his own, and he... We had a long talk. I've begun since Friday to understand what Billy's always been on about.”

“Ned--”

“No, listen,” said Ned, and began relaying everything Billy had told him about the Johannites. As he talked, if he had had a mind to notice it, Ned would have realised that for the first time in his life, he could not read the meaning of his sister's expression. Passionately excited as he was, he got so caught up in explaining how important the machine-breaking was and how much he believed it was the only way that he had still not finished speaking when their mother's voice rang out from the front door to say she was home.

At the sound of their mother's voice, Mary turned on her heel and went straight out of the back door without a look or a word.

A little alarmed, Ned called, “Hullo,” to his mother, then, “Potatoes are almost done, we're just out to pick some flowers for the table!” He ignored her sputtering sounds of protest as he hurried out to follow his sister.

At the back of their house were the backs of other houses, but if you strode down the gravel path between them, you came eventually to a clearing with a brook and a big oak in it, where people picnicked on summer Sundays. It was in this direction that Mary seemed to be headed.

“Hold on,” he called.

He reached her just as they came upon the clearing and caught her by the arm. Mary whirled about, white with fury, and struck him hard in the chest. Ned reeled back, shocked and winded. They had barely ever fought as children.

“Mary!” he cried.

“Well,” she said, “ _well_ ,” and then burst into tears.

Bewildered, Ned pulled her into his arms and they gripped each other tightly as she cried quite uncontroulably. This lasted half a minute or so. “And do you not care that machine-breakers get killed?” she asked, her voice a quiet wail. “Or did he not tell you that, Ned? I don't imagine it suited him to tell you _that_.”

Ned said nothing because he did not know what to say. Soon Mary was calm again and had stopt crying as abruptly as she had started. She pulled away from him and scrubbed at her cheeks with the palms of her hands, her breath shaky. “Billy is my friend,” she said quietly. “And I believe he is right in what he says. I believe these men hold our lives in their palms and they are too dangerous to be trusted with them. But you are my brother, Ned, and I would have you safe.”

Quietly, careful to keep his voice low in case anyone was listening, Ned said, “All my life, I have been content to live in stories. I cannot do it any longer.”

“I understand that. I do. But if you ever noticed a thing that was happening in the real world, you'd have known about the Johannites without Billy Brown having to tell you, and you'd know it's an offence punishable by hanging. _Did_ he tell you that?”

Ned hadn't known. But he was stung by his sister's anger, by her knowing him better than he knew himself, by her cleverness. “Of course,” he said.

“And that doesn't make you afraid?”

“I can't see it matters much if I'm afraid or not.”

Mary nodded slowly, mouth drawn with thought. At length she said, somewhat cautiously, “And it is Billy's cause, and not his person, that has convinced you?”

Ned felt very cold and strange suddenly, as though somebody had tipped water over his insides. “I do not understand,” he said.

Mary folded her arms and looked away up at the branches of the tree, which were being shaken by a squirrel. She sighed. “All the years that I was such good friends with Billy, did I not often speak to you of him? Was I not always trying to make you consider him more warmly than you were inclined to?”

Ned had never really noticed this, but he supposed, now she said it, it was true - Mary had indeed often spoken to him of Billy, his good qualities and his intelligence and so on.

Seeing by Ned's looks that he understood, Mary continued, “I always thought the two of you would make good friends sooner or later. Billy has most of the qualities you admire - not that you ever took much notice of any living person in the whole town all these years but me.” She laughed sadly. “Except now I fear I have primed you too well to see all the good without the bad.”

“You have done no such thing.”

“He is dangerous, Ned.”

“Well,” Ned shrugged, desperate, trying to sound calm as he said, “Well - these are dangerous times.”

“Perhaps. But Billy is _reckless_ , he is alive with his own anger, and I fear he would be as reckless with your own life and livelihood as he is with his own. I must be certain that you understand the risk you take throwing your lot in with him.”

“I do,” said Ned passionately, though a small voice inside him said, _You do not_.

“And I must tell you also that if you would do all this simply to gain Billy's respect and friendship - because I have made that sound a thing so much worth having - it is far easier won by other means.”

There was still the strange sensation inside Ned's body of coldness in all his organs, coldness in his heart and in his guts, and he wanted desperately to make his sister understand that although some or even most of what she said was true, he still felt everything he had told her before in the deepest part of himself. Although he was surprised to realise it and thrown by her anger and perceptiveness, he still felt that he had been born to march beneath the King's Banner - and that if he died in so doing, he would not mind too awfully.

Ned opened his mouth to explain himself, but what he said was, “Did you and Billy love one another before Jack asked for your hand?”

Mary was so surprised she laughed out loud, and shook her head, mystified. “Billy Brown does not think of people in that way - as something to be loved,” she said, but she could not keep the smile from her voice, so Ned could not suppose she had minded this much. “He cares for what people _do_ , and stories, and ideals.”

After a moment she added, “Actually that was one of the things that made me think the two of you should be friends. It was a trait that always put me in mind of you.”

Ned, who loved his sister so well he sometimes thought that if he had had all the Raven King's powers he would have torn the world apart and put it back together however she thought best, was a little surprised to hear she did not think of him as a person who loved, and did not know what to say. In the end he said only, “I do not go blindly into this business, Mary. I swear it.”

She nodded, and sighed. In an impossibly quiet voice she said, “Listen - Jack and I have spoken of the machine-breakers before. He has a cousin in York who has written to him of Johannite sentiment there. It is _everywhere_ , Ned. And Jack is older than us and he has many friends in the factory who will want to be a part of any plan Billy cooks up, so... So don't go keeping secrets from me, all right?”

Ned crossed his heart and swore on their father's grave that he would never keep a single thing from her. Mary nodded slowly, satisfied, and then together they picked flowers to take home to their waiting mother, and did not say any thing more to one another.

+

Hours after dinner had finished, as darkness began to fall, Ned went to the front door to wave his departing cousins off, and as he did so he spotted Billy's waiting silhouette leaning against the far wall. He excused himself for a walk, which luckily was not unusual for him - and as soon as Ned stepped out of the door, the shadow began to move.

Ned followed Billy a few minutes' walk to the silence of the churchyard, where they sat on a bench by the back wall (Billy with no small amount of pain, still) and listened quietly to the birdsong until they were sure there were no other voices or people nearby.

“Hello,” said Billy.

“Hello,” said Ned.

They smiled at one another. Then Billy reached forwards and pressed a cloth bundle into Ned's hands. “This is for you,” he said.

It was heavy. Pulling back the cloth, Ned saw that it was a metal hammer, weighty and strangely warm, presumably from having been carried inside Billy's overcoat. Warm and heavy inside its bundle, it was like something alive, something coiled and deadly, and the weight of it in Ned's hands was both a promise and a threat.

“Thank you,” said Ned, and Billy nodded.

They talked a little of this and that. Ned told Billy what Mary had said about Jack and the other men in the factory - although naturally he relayed nothing else of what she had said - and Billy seemed pleased, but Ned had a sense that all this talk was leading towards something more specific.

At length, Billy said, “And do you think it is important for us all to stand together? All the Johannites?”

“Of course.”

“And if I told you I knew of a planned march happening next Saturday, not five miles from here...?”

Ned looked up and met Billy's eyes in the gathering darkness. He tried hard to hold on to the things Mary had said that had been difficult to hear, the things she had said because she loved him - that Billy was dangerous, that he was reckless - but found he could not do it. Even just sitting quietly beside Billy, like this, made Ned feel a jangle of energy and excitement that was akin to being truly alive for the first time in all his memory.

“Do you propose that we should go?”

“I do.”

“Then we should go,” said Ned, and Billy's smile was that true smile of his again, like the sun appearing from behind a cloud. A strange and jealous little voice inside of Ned wondered if Mary had ever seen that smile, or how often, and he felt angry with himself for being so ungenerous.

No matter: it was decided now, and Ned felt himself upon a precipice with no clue what lay beneath him. He wanted to believe that it was true purpose, finally, that real meaning was incipient in this life he now felt he had largely wasted - he wanted to believe that it was mere days until he would be closer to his King than he had ever been - but he felt it was equally possible that what lay beneath him now was simply an abyss.

+

It was all as Billy had predicted - everything, all of it, was as Billy had predicted. That Wednesday evening they were told they would finish work early, because Mr Cartwright was having the new shearing frames brought in to join the ones that had come in last December. Every body stayed outside the mill and watched in silent horror as the machine parts were unloaded and brought in to be fitted together, and Ned knew all of the croppers and all of their family members who also worked at the Mill were thinking the same thing: the lay-offs were certain to start soon.

It was a relief to know that he was not as powerless as he appeared to be. That Saturday night, after they had finished work, Ned and Billy walked the five miles to the nearby town where the Johannites were marching.

It did not take long to find them - and in the crowd beneath the King's Banner, Ned felt for the first time that he was part of something bigger than himself. He knew now that he could exist meaningfully outside of his own head, that there was more to him than simply wishing and dreaming of magic - he could do things, could change things himself. He really could.

They met a man named George in the crowd who seemed to be important, though Ned could not have said why he should think this. Ned realised that George and Billy had been writing to each other, and he had just enough time to wonder how they had met, what they were speaking so intensely about, before he lost both of them in the push and pull of the march.

Ned did not mind that he was alone, or feel afraid. How could he be alone in a crowd that sang John Uskglass's name like a prayer, like a promise, like a threat? Surely he belonged here more than he had ever belonged anywhere.

And then they were inside the hated factory, inside the darkness and the dust and the smashing of the machines, inside the yelling, at the heart of the thing he had wished for, where Ned heard his own voice as though it came from someone else. His voice said, “For the Raven King!” as he brought his hammer down on a stocking frame, and voices around him in the darkness responded, “The Raven King!”

There was a deliberateness even in destroying something that Ned had not known all his life until now, and somebody sang the words to a song familiar from Ned's boyhood, and it was a woman's voice that sang even though he could not recall having seen any women on the march.

“The land is all too shallow,” she sang, “it is painted on the sky, and trembles like the wind-shook rain when the Raven King goes by.”

The wood and metal went crack and crunch beneath Ned's hammer and he was trembling too, trembling like the wind-shook rain but with terror at his own strength, which he had never really known before. He remembered reading once that magicians believed all ruins and all ruined buildings belonged to the Raven King, and he thought then that he could not think of a better gift that they could give their King. _Ruins, John Uskglass_ , he thought, _these ruins are yours_.

Suddenly he heard a shout unlike the others and the sound of a whistle, and Ned realised that it was the police or the army or both, and they were everywhere - but no sooner had he thought it than he felt the warm weight of Billy's hand close on his own.

“Time to go,” said Billy, his mouth inches from Ned's ear, and then they ran and ran until the sound of the Raven King's ruins was just an echo in their ears. Even out in the dark of the forest as they made their way home as fast as possible, avoiding the roads, it was a long time before Billy let go of his hand. Ned pulled to a halt to catch his breath and lay a thumb across Billy's wrist, and he could feel his pulse there, as fast and angry and purposeful as Ned's own.

Billy pulled his hand away and lay it on Ned's shoulder. They were both panting in the darkness.

“George is going to come to Liversedge,” said Billy quietly, when he had got his breath back. “Next week. I said I would get a band of men together to meet with him at the Crispin.”

The Saint Crispin was a public house near where they had grown up. Ned did not say anything. He was a body now and could not remember how to be a mind.

“Will you ask your sister to spread the word amongst Jack Kitson's friends?” asked Billy.

Ned genuinely doubted that he would be able to speak - but when his voice came, it was steady and calm. “Of course,” he said.

+

In the Saint Crispin, Ned sat surrounded by men he had known all his life but never truly known until this moment, when they all agreed that, yes, the machines must be smashed, and the next new moon would be the wisest night to do it on.

“In John Uskglass's name,” said George, and the Rawfolds men repeated it together, in one voice, one mind: _In John Uskglass's name_.

That night, after the men had grown rowdy, Billy suggested to Ned that they should leave them to it, and Ned was grateful. When they talked of the Raven King, Ned felt that he belonged amongst these men and loved them – but many of them were far older than Ned and Billy, with years of grievances against Mr Cartwright and the decades of overseers before Mr Blakenson, whom Ned barely remembered or had never known. He felt young and self-conscious amongst them.

So he and Billy slipped quietly away, down to the meadow by the stream where Ned had fought with Mary, and sat out on the grass. Though there was still a chill of early spring in the air, it was, for April, almost mild.

“Are you frightened?” Billy asked.

“No. Are you?”

“A little,” said Billy, but he smiled as he said it, and Ned could not really believe it.

“Perhaps I should be, then, if you are.”

They both laughed, and then Ned was surprized to hear Billy say, “Oh! Let us talk of something else for once.” For all his youth, he had always been uniquely single-minded. Ned laughed and agreed that it would be good to speak of other things.

That night they stayed out for hours until they got too cold, daring one another to paddle in the stream even though the water was still freezing; both of them did it, and then they sat shivering, huddled in close on the stream’s quiet, moonlit banks, laughing about this and that. The closest they came to discussing the Johannites was when Billy asked Ned to tell him more about the vagabond he had seen who swore John Uskglass was coming back.

Ned told him all of it, the cheese and bread, the ravens, the blue writing, and this in particular seemed to capture Billy’s imagination.

“How did you know it was writing?”

“I didn't. I’d no reason even to think it - I'm sure it was really only strange lines – and yet I felt so strongly that they _were_ letters if only I could read them.”

“On his chest?” Billy asked. He reached out towards the thin skin over Ned’s breastbone as he spoke, and brushed it with his fingertips; Ned felt he had lit up like a lantern. He must have flushed red to his hairline, although there was no reason to do so.

“Yes,” Ned made himself say, but his voice was thick in his throat. He became aware that Billy was watching him intently. Billy placed his fingertips again on the bare skin at the top of Ned’s chest, where his shirt parted, and then traced the line of Ned’s collarbone until his palm rested at Ned’s throat.

They looked at each other for a few moments, Ned wondering if Billy’s breathing was as shallow as his own, Billy’s heartbeat as quick as his own, and for a wild moment he thought he would lay a hand over Billy’s heart and discover for himself. But he did not: he only looked away towards the bank of trees opposite, where an owl was hooting, and said, “Listen.”

“I'm listening,” said Billy, and took his hand away.

+

In the fortnight before the machine breakers went to Rawfolds, the sackings began. An increasingly miserable and sloppy Mr Blakenson was made to do most of them, but when a flask of liquor fell from his pocket one grey Wednesday afternoon, he was sacked himself, and Mr Cartwright took over personally.

Of course Cartwright took most pleasure of all in ridding himself of Billy.

In spite of every thing, Billy was extremely calm throughout, and Ned would have been surprized had there not been something eerily deliberate in that calmness. He made eye contact with every worker he passed on the silent journey from his station to the door, so no man among them could have forgotten that this was what Billy had always said would come to pass.

When Billy reached the door and turned to speak to Mr Cartwright, who had followed him there (perhaps to make sure he was really leaving), Ned had a sudden terror that Billy was about to promise a Johannite vengeance to rain down on Mr Cartwright's head, or something, some dramatic touch that would put the mill owner in mind of what they had planned. But Billy simply looked up at Mr Cartwright and said in that calm, quiet voice, “It is greatly worth any hunger pangs, sir, not to have to labour any longer for a man like you.”

Then he was gone.

In the end it did not matter that Billy had not mentioned the Johannites; Mr Cartwright was quite nervous enough in light of all the marches in the area, and that bad one so recent, and only five miles distant. He was a captain in the local army and he brought them in to man the mill every night from that Thursday onwards.

Billy wrote to George as a matter of urgency and asked if he thought they should give over on their plans for Rawfolds. The army would stop at no loss of life (what was a Johannite life after all?), and they were only men. George's reply came quickly: 'On no account. It will be a decisive action, Bill, and I will send as many sympathisers as I can lay hands on.’ In a hastily scrawled postscript, George had added, ‘Your Mr Cartwright will wish he never took his strap to free-born Englishmen!'

“You spoke to him of that?” asked Ned, when Billy shewed him the letter.

“Of course,” said Billy, though he blushed when he said it. Ned had not realised that their friendship was such a close one and he felt that strange jealousy rise in him again.

“And did you tell him you had been let go?” asked Ned, who was splitting all his own meagre food with Billy now. Shamefully, he wanted Billy to say that of course George had not been as able or as willing to help as Ned had, that Ned had been so good a friend to him, etcetera - but Billy only laughed.

“I would say we all knew about that long before it happened,” he said wryly. “But yes, I wrote him directly - in fact, he is presently engaged in trying to find work for me at York.”

“You will go to York?”

“Perhaps - or Huddersfield. Anywhere that does not mean starvation…” Catching sight of Ned's expression, Billy cried, “Oh! What is it, Ned? Surely you did not think I could remain here past Saturday night?”

But Ned was speechless with shock and could not answer. In truth, he had not thought one minute past Saturday night for several weeks now. The thought of Billy leaving him alone in Liversedge after every thing filled him with a sick, cold dread.

“Perhaps I should come with you,” he said.

Billy looked surprized, but his face soon softened with affection. “Perhaps,” was all he said by way of a response.

And then before Ned knew it he had finished his working week, and it was Saturday and the new moon.

He and Billy were some of the first men in the pre-appointed clearing that night, waiting in the darkness to see who else would come to march with them beneath the King's banner. Mary had helped Ned paint the raven in flight in secret upon sheets Billy pinched from his aunt's house, and in the darkness below the canopy of trees Ned held it to his chest like a baby in swaddling clothes.

And as they waited, over the next few hours men came from just about everywhere they had ever heard of. There were tens and then there were hundreds - the first of them carrying sticks, hammers, torches, with faces and worn hands as familiar to Ned as his own; Ned thought fleetingly of his father, and wondered whether he would have been amongst them if he had lived to see it. Then came strangers' faces, some friendly, some not, all filled with the same desperate passion, and Ned saw with mounting horror that several of them were holding muskets.

“There must be 200 men here,” said Billy, clutching Ned's arm with furious excitement. “More, even.”

“Have you seen...?” Ned muttered, and gestured to the musket in the hand of the nearest man. Billy's eyes widened with surprize for only an instant before his face was set again, but Ned knew him too well already to believe that he was not concerned.

“George must have told people about the local army being up at the mill,” said Billy quietly.

“Better this than they should go in blind,” said Ned. “But still. Johannites are easily enough hanged as it is.”

“Don't talk like that,” said Billy sharply, but Ned felt him reach for his hand in the darkness and squeeze it once, and he knew then that it was going to be a bloodbath.

For all his idolatry of John Uskglass, Ned realized he had not really understood him until this moment - the loneliness of knowledge's own power, the burden of greater understanding - as everyone began moving towards the mill full of life and certainty and song, while only Ned knew that what truly waited for them there was simply death. He tried to feel as he had felt the other night in that other town - friended, right and true - but he felt only a creeping horror that dulled his senses. He tried to imagine that John Uskglass moved amongst them, beneath the banners they'd slung out from hand to hand, beneath the ravens he'd helped paint, but Ned could not make himself believe it. John Uskglass would not come and they would all be killed.

As they marched towards the mill, Ned seized Billy by the waist and pulled him in towards him. Billy wrapped an arm about his shoulders, buoyant with hope and camaraderie, but even he looked a little grey in the dull light. “I'm frightened,” Ned whispered.

“Don't be,” said Billy, and held him against his side so tightly that Ned could no longer tell which one of them was trembling.

As they drew closer to the mill, the first musket fire began, sending birds sprawling into the air with sudden loud sounds that shook the night. And then there was shouting all around them, a clamour unlike Ned had ever known before, frightened but resolutely single-minded. The men inside the walls of the mill fired down on them and by the flame of torchlight and in the flashes of musket-fire Ned could see the faces around him lit up in all their terror and pain.

“Murder them!” cried somebody.

“Let us in!” came another voice.

And then somebody shouted, “For the Raven King!” and suddenly everyone was shouting this, and he could hear yelling from inside the mill and somebody to Ned's right was screaming, screaming, screaming.

“We must go around,” said Billy, white and furious, and began to spread the word, and Ned was telling just this to a man who suddenly received a shot in the leg and fell to the ground.

“Billy!” Ned shouted, horrified, and he felt Billy's hand in his own again, as strong and certain as it had been before, but Ned had not known real terror then, not like this.

“Come on,” said Billy, tugging at his hand, and the crowd began to swarm about the mill to its side entrance, and all the while the musket fire came thick and fast.

Ned remembered the woman’s song in the dark heat of the stocking factory, the song he had known since boyhood, and he tried to sing it underneath his breath as the crowd moved as one body against the walls of the mill, attempting to gain entry. He wished she were here and singing, whoever she was. He wished he was at home with Mary.

“In the King’s name, let us in!” somebody cried.

“This is desperate,” Billy shouted in Ned’s ear above the roar of the crowd.

“I know. What can we do?”

Billy looked at Ned and then away again, said, “I think--” and then there was a deafening sound and the next thing Ned knew Billy was no longer standing beside him but lay crumpled on the ground.

The crowd was silent. Every body was yelling but it made no noise. Ned waited for the Raven King’s horse to appear beside him and raise his friend up from the ground like a child lifting a doll, and he waited, and he knew that the King if he was coming must come _now_ , but nothing happened.

Ned knelt on the ground beside Billy. He was still breathing. Ned touched his face and his hand came away slick with dark blood, and in that black night in the middle of the sounds of panic that he could hear once more, he realised, Ned picked Billy up in his arms and walked away from all of it and all of them.

There was a part of Ned that had believed ever since he was small and dreamt his dream of the moors that if he had been born a few hundred years earlier, he would have learned magic. He had no reason to assume this – he had never done one single act of magic in his life – but the feeling returned to him now that he could do it, that the knowledge was somewhere deep inside himself of the words he must speak to save his friend’s life, that it was a thing he could puzzle out somehow.

“Don’t you be frightened, Billy,” he said, as he moved away from the mill, past where they had sat together that first night, deeper and deeper into the forest. “Don’t be afraid. I have you here. No harm will come to you.”

But mostly he did not talk at all, straining his ears for the sound of Billy’s shallow breaths over the twigs that crunched beneath his feet. He did not know how long it had been since they had all gathered in the clearing or what time it now was. He walked for perhaps twenty minutes until they were deep inside the darkness of the forest, and then he lay Billy down and held him in his arms and cried like a little boy.

He thought of the dream he had dreamt every night when he was small, the dream of being alone in the wilderness with nothing but his magic, and he tried to remember how it had felt, and to make a spell come to him somehow, and he prayed to John Uskglass, but nothing happened. They were just two boys alone in a forest and one of them was bleeding. Ned was bruised from the crowd and scratched from the brambles but all he could feel was an ache inside of himself like a torment. _Please,_ he prayed, _I will happily live my whole life and never see you and never mind and never ask you for another thing again if you will only save my friend_.

And then somehow, curled up in the darkness against Billy's side and shaking with terror and exhaustion, Ned fell asleep.

+

“Ned. Ned.”

It was Billy’s voice, weak but unmistakeable. He was awake, blinking at Ned in the dim light, their faces lying opposite one another’s on the ferny and damp-smelling forest floor.

“You’re alive,” Ned cried.

“I do seem to be,” said Billy, then hissed with pain as he raised a hand to his temple. It was lightening a little now, the sky was pale above the canopy of trees, and Ned could see that Billy had a deep graze at his temple from a musket ball – although he was ghoulishly pale and covered with blood, it was not a wound one necessarily died from. Ned began to cry again, but very, very quietly.

“What happened?” Billy asked, his voice a rasp as his breathing began to even out again.

“It is terrible to say, but I do not know,” said Ned. “There was fire on both sides and a terrible clamour, and when you were shot I simply carried you away. I did not even look back.”

Billy said nothing, but held an arm out to Ned, who curled up underneath it and settled there against his side, crying as quietly as he could. He did not want to do this any longer. He did not want to be a man with a cause. He wanted only for them to be boys together and both live until they were wise old men together.

“I am sorry for it, Billy,” Ned added in a whisper, but Billy was asleep again. Ned slept another fitful half an hour or so himself, but he was too cold now and had too bad a headach from all his misery. But he must have slept, for he awoke to the feeling of Billy's hand against his face. Billy was looking at him very seriously in the early light of the morning.

“I will have to leave soon,” he said. His voice sounded a little stronger now. 

“You cannot.”

“I must, Ned. This injury will tell any body in the area who cares to look at me that I am a Johannite who was at the mill last night. I will be hanged.”

Ned shook his head, but he knew that what Billy said was true. He could feel the ball of Billy's thumb stroking a circle against his cheekbone, and he braced his palms against Billy's chest, curled his fingers in the cloth of his shirt. He said, “I will come with you.”

“No.”

“I must! You are badly hurt.”

It was true that Billy looked impossibly pale and exhausted, his clothes stiff with dried blood, and he was shivering so hard now from a cold night outside and from the pain that without even thinking of what he did, Ned wrapped his arms about Billy and pulled him in closer. Billy said his name very quietly and sadly and then leaned forwards and pressed their mouths together.

Ned did not know what he had been expecting - certainly it was not that - and yet he did not exactly feel surprized. Billy pulled back and looked at him and said his name again, once, softly.

Emotions roiled in Ned’s chest, but chief among them was still the desire not to be abandoned. “I swear I would rather be hanged myself than stay here on my own,” he said.

“That's as may be,” said Billy. “But I am too conspicuous now. I cannot let you take that risk on my account.”

“I would bear it gladly.”

“I know, and you are very brave, Ned! But I could not bear to see you - if they caught us - knowing that it was my own fault... No. And besides, you have a family here who love you. Your mother. Mary.”

Ned felt a stab of shame at having forgotten his sister so easily. She would be at home even now, suffering because of him: he had not come back all night, and she was sure to think that he had died at Rawfolds, or else been arrested. And yet he knew that if Billy asked him to, he would leave Mary and his mother both in an instant; very probably he would never forgive himself for doing so, but it still seemed preferable at this moment than that Billy should disappear entirely from his life. He would do any thing if Billy asked it of him, and if Billy was not there to ask it, what was there left for him to do?

With a sudden desperation, Ned kissed him again, only once; their lips were very cold but he did not notice or mind. By now they were too exhausted even to talk and just lay quietly on the forest floor, holding onto one another very tightly. Ned slept, and when he woke again he was alone, and that was that.

“Oh,” he said to nobody in particular. Ned lay on the ground a little longer, and then struggled to his feet, stiff-limbed. 

It was very quiet now, and almost dawn. There was dark blood on the forest floor where they had slept, and a thin film of dew over everything, making Ned’s dirtied clothes damp. Ned strained his ears for the sound of musket fire, but all that had long since finished. Smoke rose over the trees in the direction he had come from last night, and he began to pick his way back through the forest towards it, circling down through the trees so that he would not have to pass by the mill to get home. And when he reached the edge of the forest and came upon the town he had lived in all his life, the sun peeked over the top of the moors and all the birds began to sing at once, as if by magic. 

As he climbed the stairs to his childhood bedroom, Ned felt he moved through a dream. Pushing open the door, he found that Mary was asleep in his bed, and wearing his own nightshirt. She opened her eyes and when she saw that it was him she began very quietly to cry. Without a word, she got up and wrapped him tightly in her arms as he wept too, and then they hushed one another so as not to disturb their mother in the next room, like when they were small and had stayed up later than they were supposed to, telling stories.

Mary took Ned back downstairs and sat him down in the kitchen. She pulled out an old rag and the wooden bucket full of water and very gently washed Billy’s blood from his hands and face, and Ned’s own blood from his arms where the briars in the forest had ripped at his skin, and she did not ask what had happened. Then they went back upstairs and lay down in Ned’s small bed together as they had not done since they were children, and at last Mary said quietly, “I have had no news of Jack. If I go to his house before the proper hour, every body will know that he was in the crowd at the mill.”

“I am sorry,” said Ned. “There were so many people - I did not see him.”

Mary nodded. She lay on her back, squeezed against Ned’s side in the small bed, and stared at the ceiling. “I cannot sleep,” she said. 

“Shall I read to you?”

“Read what?”

Ned thought a moment. Then he reached underneath his bed and pulled out a small weather-beaten book full of his own ten-year-old self’s messy handwriting. “Do you remember this?” he said.

Mary laughed a tearful sort of laugh. It was the record he had kept of every family in town’s stories of the Raven King. “Can you read your own hand?” 

“Not easily,” Ned answered, and he laughed too. Then Mary curled up against his side as he opened the book and began to read to her.

“The Hardings are first – remember them? ‘Mr H says he saw the Raven King himself as a boy which is NOT TRUE, he is not old enough, but Mrs H told me her mother’s mother’s mother’ – well, this sounds very likely – ‘married a man whose family had owned a horse John Uskglass borrowed and rode to war, it rode so well he rewarded them with’ – well. With whatever that is supposed to say.”

He turned to shew the book to Mary and found that she was already looking at him. They considered one another quietly for a moment, and then she asked, “Was Billy killed?” 

Ned felt a pain in his heart like a bruise being pressed, just at hearing his name. “I do not think so,” he said, and tried to smile.

But as he lay there in his sister’s arms in the place where he had been a boy, he wished that he could have known for certain Billy had made it somewhere safe and well, just as fervently as he had ever wished for a sign of John Uskglass, and just, he was certain, as fruitlessly.

It seemed a remarkable thing, then, for several reasons, when a small book arrived for Ned two weeks later in brown paper packaging. It was a plain book by Lord Portishead, printed and bound at York, called _A Child’s History of the Raven King_ , and it was small enough to be carried close to Ned's heart.

It arrived without any kind of note, but of course that did not really matter. Ned knew well enough who it was from.

**Author's Note:**

> A word here for the real Luddites of Rawfolds Mill, who suffered one of the worst defences of property over life of the entire Luddite movement. The mill was successfully guarded by the local army and the machine-breakers failed to gain entry. Two of them died of their injuries that night and fourteen of the men involved were later hanged.


End file.
